Day Eleven: Done. 1,003 words.

I really didn’t want to write tonight. I’m exhausted and depressed, and the last thing I wanted to do was to focus on creating something. But I had this challenge, and it’s only fourteen days, which isn’t all that much to start with anyway, and this is only the eleventh day which is obviously even less, so I pushed myself to write something because I figured something was better than nothing.

I don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. Maybe it’s like exercise, and sometimes you push yourself to run a mile even when you feel like crap and all you want to do is sit in front of the television and binge-watch Grey’s Anatomy which, for the record, is exactly what I wanted to do except I was never, ever going to be running a mile, except writing 1,000 words felt a lot like running a mile, or at least I assume it does because I don’t run.

So I wrote a ramble which, in case you’re not familiar with rambles, is pretty much like this post except this post is much more organized because it consists of more than one sentence, and the trick with a ramble is to tell an entire story in a single sentence. Tonight’s ramble didn’t really have a plot—in fact, truth be told, it was closer to being a journal entry except I don’t type journal entries, but if I’d done a journal entry in my journal, it would have taken forever because I’d have been doing it by hand and I’d have had to keep stopping to count words instead of just looking at whatever Word said was the length of the document, so typing my ramble was at least faster and lent itself to a greater word count which is how I hit a thousand words at all, and for what it’s worth, this blog post is turning out to be another three hundred and change, which isn’t bad for a ramble although, as I said before, this one isn’t really a ramble since it has several sentences, but it’s not a bad shot at one, so here’s my advice: if you don’t feel like writing and you have to write for some reason, try writing a ramble and see how long you can go on without starting a new sentence because either you’re just going to spew out everything that’s in your brain that’s making you tired and depressed or you’re going to turn a corner and start to have fun with it and either way, there’s no downside (and not for nothing, but I’m now past four hundred words on this blog post, so you see how fast you can get into the habit of continuing to write once you start a ramble).

Oh, and one more thing: sometimes you can even get a ramble published, so that’s another reason to try it, plus if you don’t click on this link, you’ll never know why I used this particular photo today.

Day Eight: Done. 1,715 words.

Some days, you just have to write fluff. I mean fluff. Pure escapism, with no particular literary value, and certainly nothing profound. Work that has as its only goal making somebody—maybe the reader, maybe just you as the writer—laugh.

Not brilliant satire, the kind that takes some amazingly talented person hours to create and edit and hone into a fine-bladed wit. Just plain old garden-variety, laugh-while-you-read-it-and-then-forget-all-about-it fluff. All the intellectual nutrition of cotton candy.

Yep. Some days, that’s just exactly what a person needs. Like me, today. I wrote cotton candy. And it was good.

Day Six: Done. 1,101 words.

I wonder how much of what I’m writing now will end up being useful. I’m fleshing out a lot about my main character’s childhood, including his first love, his abusive father, and the friend who ended up being his nemesis. No clue how all (or any) of this will fit into the original story line—assuming, of course, that story line even survives.

I have no idea what lies ahead for my characters. Of course, this is also true for all of us here the real world, so I suppose it’s only fair.

Day Five: Done. 1,160 words.

No more to say today.

Day Four: Done. 1,034 words, divided over two sections of the manuscript.

I continue to be amazed at how this story is developing as I push myself to write more. Shortly before the pandemic, I’d discovered a pair of new characters, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Now, because I’m committed to adding a thousand words to their tale every day, I’m finding out so much about them and how they interact with my main character.

It’s like all those articles say: don’t wait to be inspired. Sit down and start putting words on the page, and the ideas will show up. Thanks, #1000wordsofsummer!

How are you doing? Have you written your 1,000 words yet today? If so, let us know!